Balbir Singh Sandhu

Balbir Singh Sandhu was Secretary General of the National Council of Khalistan, a small body that called for an independent Sikh state in the early 1980s. A Home Ministry note printed in Gurmit Singh's History of Sikh Struggles describes him as a resident of Amritsar and names Dr Jagjit Singh Chohan, a former Akali minister living abroad, as the Council's president. Wikipedia says Chohan declared the Council at Anandpur Sahib on 12 April 1980, naming himself president and Balbir Singh Sandhu its Secretary General. Wikipedia adds that Sandhu made a parallel announcement in Amritsar, releasing Khalistan stamps and currency.

The sources we opened give no date of birth or death for him, and nothing about his life before 1981 or after the Council was banned. He appears in the record through what he did and said in those two years.

Key moments

• 1981: the Home Ministry note, printed as an appendix in Gurmit Singh's first volume, quotes him as saying that Giani Zail Singh, Prakash Singh Badal, Jathedar Santokh Singh, the Communist Party, the Jan Sangh and the Lok Dal were creating a lobby against the Council, that even intellectuals had begun to give it moral support, and that Badal, Balwant Singh and Ravi Inder Singh had no love for the Sikh religion and wanted only power.
• 9 to 11 September 1981: Gurmit Singh writes that within 48 hours of the killing of Lala Jagat Narain on 9 September he released Khalistan dollars and handed out copies of Khalistan passports at the Akal Takht.
• 29 September 1981: after five Dal Khalsa members hijacked an Indian Airlines flight to Lahore, Gurmit Singh reports that Sandhu commended Dal Khalsa for its bold initiative in the fight for Khalistan, and said the hijacking showed the suppression and despair felt by the Sikh community.
• 3 May 1982: the Home Minister's notification declaring the Council an unlawful association under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 says that, through Sandhu's declaration, the Council had proclaimed the aim of an autonomous Sikh state of Khalistan. It accuses the Council of encouraging Dal Khalsa, whose activities it calls “secessionist and violent”, and of issuing five-dollar notes, postage stamps and passports of the so-called Government of Khalistan.

Remembered for: the Khalistan dollars, stamps and passports of 1981 and 1982, and for being named in the Government's ban on the Council.